His arm went up reluctantly. Mara reached her syringe toward him and injected it through his fatigues while working around her bandaged thumb.
“Mission control is going to be sending us home after this,” Reese said. “And what happens if we are supposed to be in quarantine?”
“I don’t know,” Mara answered as she gave the shot to Hanson.
This was the final blow in her mind. She knew they would be leaving immediately. She was finding it hard to concentrate.
Mara finished with Hanson and threw herself onto the chair in front of the exam box and turned towards the specimen. She grabbed the torn rubber glove and ripped it out of the attachment and threw it across the room. A few beads of her red blood splattered nearby as she flung it against the wall. Hanson and Reese backed out of her way, afraid of getting the blood on them.
“You know, that’s not going to do us any good,” Hanson chided. He bent over and started looking for shut-off valves and turned some of the gases and electrical switches off in front of Mara.
Reese saw Hanson starting to put the room together and began to help. She went to the computer and shut down the emergency alarms. She started sifting and picking up drawers of equipment and placing them back into their cabinets.
Mara sat in the corner watching, still fearful for the infection she knew she would have. Her mind was racing with the implications it would have for her and the mission.
It was dark. Smoke had filled the upper half of the lab. Sparks were still spitting out of a control panel at the other end of the room.
Two miners from the Zephyr briefly stopped by the latch door. They attempted to get in and then yelled through the door at Hanson, desperately requiring his advice. Mara could hear Hanson shouting through the door over the sounds of hissing pipes and sparks. She heard him trying to explain that he was in quarantine to them.
The lights flickered back on. Power. Mara could suddenly see the entirety of the disaster. Most of her equipment was strewn about the room, and her samples were tossed around. They had gone dark after having lit up the space with their light.
It crossed her mind to look at her specimen. She refocused and looked upon the creature, still laying on its side. She examined it closely. It was still pulsing colors, as if searching for a combination, or a correct sequence of light flashes. She held the specimen in her right hand, and she searched for the incision she had made. There was none. There was no sign of it on its body, anywhere, but she was certain she had pierced the shell of the animal.
No matter how close she looked, there was no sign of an opening or cut. The creature began flashing the signals, and rapid pulses of light filtered through the entire spectrum. Mara watched it palpitate through the rainbow, changing colors nearly faster than she could discern them. They lit up her hand, and nearly blurred into a static white light.
She looked at her thumb. She hadn’t imagined the incident. There was blood on the gauze that was wrapped around it. She felt the pulse of her heart pumping pain to the location of the cut.
She remembered the clear fluid she had seen come out of the creature. It had mixed with her blood on the table. She looked down at the tissue on the examination try. A rosy pink mixture was still there. It had stained the tissue.
“Hey…” she called to Reese, but there was no response.
“Hey…” she said again, still trying to get the others attention. Reese finally turned to her.
“I made an incision in this creature right before the quake. I know I did. That’s how I cut my thumb,” she said.
“Yeah,” Reese answered.
Mara looked down at her thumb and the bandages covering her scar. She felt it with her other hand. There was a bloody mark on the dressings. It didn’t make any sense that her thumb was still throbbing from a cut, yet the specimen showed no signs of it.
“Look at it. The incision is gone,” she said.
“What do you mean, gone?” Reese stopped and asked.
“I don’t know. I mean the incision I made is… gone,” Mara said again. The creature lay on the tissue, still flashing through the entire spectrum of light, anxiously searching for the perfect sequence of light pulses.
With her bare hand still sticking through the opening, Mara grabbed the creature. She examined it as Reese stood behind her. It continued to flash in various colors.
“What’s going on with this thing?” Mara asked. Determined to see again, she picked up the scalpel that had rolled to the inside edge of the table. It was still stained with her blood.
She placed the scalpel into the flashing creature. It immediately halted the light display. a clear fluid oozed once again, slowly dripping from its body. She forced the blade along the same line, paying careful attention to the length, depth, and location of the cut.
Mara grabbed a small flask with her bare hand. She held the severed creature over it. Several drops of the clear fluid oozed from its flesh and into the flask. She capped it and set it on a nearby tray.
They waited to see what would happen. Mara looked around the room. Hanson was still cleaning debris while shouting orders to his men outside the door. She overheard him explaining why he was locked inside again. Occasional sparks flew from overloaded electronic boards on the wall. The broken pipe was suspended above, but the gases were no longer coming out of the opening. Hanson had managed to find the valve and stopped the flow.
Mara returned to the specimen. She watched it intensely. Nothing could distract her. The creature began to flash through the colors again, this time even more rapidly.
Dr. Aman came over the com-link. “Mara, this is Dr. Aman, are you there?” he asked.
“Here,” she said without taking her eyes off the exam table.
“Look, we are reporting major damage to the Hab,” he told her. “Stenner has been notified. Life support is good. Power is good. Stenner is calling an abort mission as soon as we have the fuel.”
“Gotcha, Dr. Aman,” Mara said, her eyes still focusing on her specimen. “I have something that needs your attention here.”
“Did you hear me, Mara? It is not very good timing…”
“I need you to see this.”
“I will be back in a few minutes,” he answered. “Did you hear me say abort mission?” he asked her.
“I need you to watch this. You don’t have long,” Mara told him. She leaned backward against a set of cabinets; her eyes fixed upon the specimen. Then she saw it move. She squinted and looked closer. “Watch,” she yelled. Reese and Hanson turned to watch with her.
The creature moved a little more.
Mara held still while she watched what she thought was about to happen. She crawled upon her knees and placed her hands on the exam table, then leaned forward toward the creature. Her nose was nearly level with the tray. Her eyes fixed on the animal. She held her breath waiting for something more to happen.
The specimen pulsed an entire series of light flashes. It wiggled in place and gyrated. Like a caterpillar encasing itself in a cocoon, the ends made little circles around the larger body. The light intensified, repeating even more rapidly. The faces of the scientists glowed with it. Then, the incision closed itself from one end to the other. In just a matter of seconds, it was gone.
Mara looked over the exam box, stunned. The creature had healed itself for a second time, and it had taken a matter of seconds.
“Did you see that?” Mara asked. “Dr. Aman,” she shouted into the comm-link.
It took a few seconds for Dr. Aman to come in again. Mara saw his face on the monitor. “Aman, you were supposed to see that.”
“We are still dealing with quite a situation here.” Dr. Aman
told her.
“You missed it,” she said.
“In a minute.”
Mara backed away from the comm-link. She put her back to the wall and slid down until she l
anded upon the floor on her backside. She knocked her head back against the cabinet, creating a loud bang.
Nothing made sense anymore. She was thrilled with these new findings, and angry they could no longer research the creatures below — angry they couldn’t report their findings. Now they would be leaving. She was certain of it. This quake would force them to abandon the mission.
Dr. Aman appeared on the monitor again.
“Mara, what is it you wanted?” he asked. “I am sorry I cannot help you.”
“Aman,” Mara started. “I believe I’ve just witnessed a true regeneration event. It’s done it twice now.”
Dr. Aman stood still on the monitor. He had a mulling expression on his face. “You are saying that you have witnessed a regeneration event?” he asked.
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying,” Mara told him.
There was a call coming in on the comm-link at the Hab One. “I am sorry. I better get that,” Dr. Aman said.
The doctor left the monitor and disappeared to someplace off-screen. Mara sighed. She sat in place on the floor as Hanson and Reese continued picking up the equipment that had spilled out of their containers. They were putting the room back in order.
Dr. Aman came back.
“Mara, Stenner is ordering an abort mission, but we are not launch-ready. Do you copy?”
“Copy that,” Mara answered. “So, what do we do?”
“We may have to move to higher ground. See if we can get up on one of the bluffs beyond the rift.”
Mara slammed her hand on the counter. “A lot of good that is going to do if we are stuck in quarantine,” Mara churned. “You need to get us over there with the samples… and quick. Screw quarantine. You hear me, Aman?” She flipped the switch to the comm-link, cutting off the conversation.
Mara stared at the ceiling from her seat on the floor. A helpless feeling overwhelmed her. She feared for her life. She feared for the infection she likely had. She feared another quake worse than this latest one. She realized Mission Control had been right to have them launch-ready.
Lights flickered around her and pipes continued to hiss cloudy gases into the room. The sounds were drowned out by her sense of desperation. If this was the end, she would die here in the quarantine without the answers to so many of her questions.
She sat on the floor and she thought about what it would be like to lose her life on Europa. She thought about the discoveries the world would never know about. She thought about how she hadn’t even wanted to make this journey, and now that she was here, she had pushed to stay beyond what was safe. She had even endangered her crew.
She had wanted nothing more than to see below the ice of this moon, but she had wanted to be able to share what she had found with the world. There was a sharp sense of irony that struck her; the reality that she had discovered something amazing inside this world, but she would die here with it, unable to share it with anyone else.
It was the worst situation she could imagine; dying with the knowledge and answers she always wanted right here at her fingertips, but unable to share them, and nobody to share them with.
Then she felt something. It was something inside of her body, her blood, and inside her bones. It was a sensation so foreign that she wasn’t even sure she knew how to judge it. Something was different. Whatever that something was, it had affected her deeply.
“Maybe this was it?” she thought. The infection had taken. She would be spared the worst of this disaster, to die quickly here of a foreign microbe rather than starve or freeze to death while stranded on the moon.
She let herself become overwhelmed with frustration, anger, and hopelessness. The strange sensation washed over her. She expected that she was dying, infected with something so foreign and exotic that her body posed no resistance to it. She closed her eyes and shut the world out. She gave herself to the sensations, and her memories begun rapidly coming back to her. She felt for the ring under her suit. Let this be it, she prayed. Let this be the end. Then maybe she would finally be happy… maybe she could be with him.
CHAPTER 9
Seven years ago
Mara startled when she leaned back from her slide in the microscope and saw that someone was standing right in front of her. George had been trying not to interrupt her work and had inadvertently snuck up too close. She slapped him on the shoulder when she realized who it was.
“What are you trying to do to me?” she said with an amused
smile.
“I wanted to see if you were interested in dinner.”
“Like usual… Just finishing up,” she said. Her warm breath left a cloud of vapor in the frigid air. The lab was kept below freezing to maintain conditions for the ice cores she was studying. She pulled the hood of her jacket from over her head, exposing her dark curly hair.
George stood aside as she placed her samples in their containers and stuffed them into the storage room. The ice core was one of dozens in the storage area, and George looked deep into the sample room to see stacks and stacks of them.
“I want to talk to you about something,” he told her with a curious inflection.
Mara was immediately suspicious. Usually they just knew to meet up at the chow line.
“Is this about the end of our expedition?” she asked.
“Sort of,” he said.
“Let’s get up there before the good stuff is gone.”
The mess hall was several decks up on the research vessel. They walked the narrow corridors with heavy boots clanking on metal steps. Their expedition to Antarctica had been a success and was nearly over. Mara had researched depleting ice-bound bacteria along the ice shelf. She was searching for a baseline to count the dwindling populations over time.
George, an Astronomer, had played a key role in several successful measurements of the cosmic background radiation via high-altitude balloons. His background as both an astronomer and amateur meteorologist had helped immensely in determining the appropriate locations to place and launch the weather balloons for his team.
They rounded the last flight of stairs in front of the galley, already busy with the dinner shift. George handed Mara a place setting and tray before taking one himself. It was cafeteria style eating on the research vessel. A tray was pushed along a lineup of food, and servers busily scooped and tapped food onto plates. He stood aside as she went ahead in line.
He attempted to start the conversation before she was distracted by the servers, who would dip their utensils into the food like it was a contest in quickness.
“I’d like to work out how to see each other after the expedition,” he told her. “Would you like to try and make that happen?”
Mara worked her way through the line, signaling several times for items of food she wanted. She didn’t want to seem to be ignoring George, but inside she was unraveling, worried how to answer. She knew she could be good at disguising her emotions, and she knew it was maddening for George, who appeared to be clinging for any response from her.
He continued to speak through her gesturing motions at the servers, and she noticed he was becoming more and more nervous as she refrained from an answer.
“I was thinking, it would be nice to see more of each other is all,” she heard him say.
She didn’t reply.
“Mara?” he asked again.
She was distracted by the hungry scientists seated in the galley. They busily clanked bowls and dishes and silverware together while George waited, but she wasn’t sure what to say.
Mara wondered what George must be expecting. They had met by chance on a joint biology and astronomy expedition. Mara had been used to short relationships during her short excursions but had never continued one beyond that time frame. She had a hard time imagining how two young professionals, traveling the world to pursue their studies could make a relationship work.
Asking Mara to spend m
ore time together after their expedition was breaking an unspoken code, in her mind. Their relationship was supposed to be casual. She thought she had made that clear.
George had introduced himself during the initiation. It had begun innocently, then slowly became more, neither of them knowing how they would have handled the relationship outside of the expedition. Such worry was never part of the culture here. Relationships would form and then dissipate when the research was over. It was kept that way due to the nature of the work.
Mara smiled at George after an awkward minute of silence. She carried her tray in both hands, working her way toward the silverware. She grabbed a cold milk, and continued to their usual table. George followed immediately behind.
He approached the table and sat facing her, his back to the room, as if he could shield the rest of the cafeteria from their conversation. Mara could see that he was nervous, anxious for her to address his question. She knew that she was torturing him with silence. He sat down and arranged his tray the way he liked it, then nervously waited for her to say something. Anything.
She made eye contact and offered him an acknowledging smile as she chewed her first bite of meatloaf.
“What do you have in mind, George?” she asked.
George shuffled his weight in his seat, looking for the correct words. “Well, we’ve been seeing each other nearly every day,” he reminded her. “And I thought it would be nice if we could see each other… after the expedition… Somehow.”
Mara probed her meatloaf with her fork. She shuffled some green beans across her plate. She suspected for some time that George was feeling more than a casual relationship, but she wondered exactly how serious he was.
She remained silent. “You know, Kennedy Space Center is right there in Florida. I go by there often. I could come see you in Pensacola,” he suggested.
Mara continued the silent treatment. Her true feelings were conflicted about serious relationships. She hadn’t expected to be in one at this stage of her career. Not while she was doing her fieldwork. She loved the work and the travel, and she expected it would be difficult to maintain a relationship until she was in the more stable part of her career, teaching perhaps.
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